FDR Jones:cptjeff: Jack is a bourbon. Not a very good one, mind you, and they don't like to use the word because they like to pretend that "Tennessee Whiskey" is somehow different. In reality, it's legally defined as bourbon made in Tennessee where it's defined at all, the term is just marketing. There are other bourbons that do the charcoal filtering, and "sour mash" is a process, not a type of whiskey, and is used in nearly all bourbons and ryes.

Plenty of bourbons filter the white dog. That's not all that unusual, nor is it in any way determinative of the definition of the whiskey. And the charcoal "mellowing" doesn't affect it being bourbon at all- Jack Daniels pretends that it does, but The US Government has looked at it and shrugged- it doesn't count as additional flavoring, it counts as filtering. It fits every element of the legal definition of bourbon, and when we make trade deals (NAFTA, for example), we protect the term "Tennessee Whiskey" as a subcategory of bourbon.

It's glitz. It's Marketing. Jack is overpriced bourbon. If you like it, whatever. More power to ya. But recognize that they're not actually as special as they pretend to be.

Yeah. Fermented beverages like wine have all kinds of chemicals in, as they're only 12-16% alcohol usually. So they can react to themselves, and usually have a colony of yeast still living inside. Their flavor changes over time because it's still reacting and if you let it go too long it becomes vinegar.

The distilled stuff is boiled to vapor and thus is almost pure concentrated ethanol, then diluted back down with water. There's very little in un-aged booze and it's all uniform. No reactions take place in the bottle. Placing in a cask, on the other hand, lets you get all kinds of chemistry going on, but slowly. So 20 year old whiskey is indeed radically different from 2 year old whiskey. But 18 and 20 might not change that much, even if the price does.

Iron Felix:Cleaned out a liquor cabinet of an old couple's house...they had whiskey and bourbon dating to the early 60s. I tried each one, and was really unimpressed..

Booze doesn't age in the bottles like wine. Booze "ages" in barrels that have been charred inside for maximum chemical exchange.

That's why whiskey and vodka, which are basically the same thing at the time of manufacture, are so radically different in color and flavor. Whiskey is aged in barrels which gives it the tannin coloration and the woody flavor, vodka is not.

Finding bottles from the 60's means nothing, as the liquor inside hasn't been in contact with wood.